The present invention relates to the magnetic resonance arts. It finds particular application in conjunction with medical imaging and will be described with reference thereto. It is to be appreciated, however, that the invention may find further application in quality control inspections, spectroscopy, and the like.
Heretofore, linearly polarized magnetic resonance coils have been placed adjacent the surface of a patient to receive magnetic resonance signals therefrom. The linearly polarized coils receive only one component of magnetic resonance signals, commonly, the component in either the horizontal or vertical direction. By contrast, the magnetic resonance signals emanating from the subject are more accurately defined by a vector which rotates in a plane, i.e. has two orthogonal components. Thus, the linearly polarized coil only receives one of the two orthogonal components.
A quadrature coil, which has a circularly polarized magnetic field, receives back orthogonal components of the rotating vector. The quadrature coil extracts twice the signal power from the rotating vector than does the linearly polarized coil with the same noise. This results in a signal-to-noise ratio which is greater by the square root of two or about 41%. However, prior art quadrature coils have normally been volume coils rather than flat surface coils. For example, the volume quadrature coils have included two saddle coils which were rotated 90.degree. relative to each other. The portion of the patient to be imaged was disposed within the volume defined in the interior of the saddle coils. Analogously, other coil designs were utilized which defined a volume around the circularly polarized region.
Others have recognized the desirability of a quadrature surface coil. See for example U.S. Pat. No. 4,721,913, issued Jan. 26, 1988 to Hyde, et al. However, the Hyde surface coil was relatively bulky and required accompanying complex electronic circuitry. The Hyde coil arrangement required relatively thick coils in the direction perpendicular to the subject. Positioning a coil of such bulk under a patient resting on a patient table caused considerable discomfort, as well as distorting the physiology of the adjoining body parts. Further, the Hyde coil was structurally complex, hard-to-align, and hard to fine tune. Moreover, because the Hyde coils were inductively coupled, they could not be actively decoupled from the transmit field requiring complex isolation circuitry.
In accordance with the present invention, a thin, quadrature surface coil is provided to overcome the above referenced problems and others.